Travel In Style

Airline Review: Cathay Pacific regional Business Class

The Cathay Pacific regional Business Class offers a fairly high level of comfort for short flights. Especially compared to Singapore Airlines, I was still a little disappointed. Read why in this extensive airline review!

Cathay Pacific doesn’t have any narrowbody aircraft in its own fleet, only the subsidy Cathay Dragon does. This means that when flying Cathay Pacific, you’ll always find yourself in a widebody aircraft, even for shorter flights within Asia.

Airplane: Boeing 777-300

Cabin Class: Business

Daytime: Evening

Food: Dinner

Seat Pitch: 45 Inch (114 Centimeter)

Seat Width: 20 Inch (51 Centimeter)

This is also the reason why I had the chance to fly the Cathay Pacific regional Business Class in a Boeing 777 on a flight from Bangkok to Hongkong. All in all, the product is okay for such a flight, but it’s far from industry leading, even for a short and medium haul product.

Seating in the Cathay Pacific regional Business Class

While Cathay Pacific offers great reverse herringbone seats in a 1-2-1 configuration on long haul flights, the regional configuration comes with plain forward facing seats in a 2-3-2 configuration.

This means that there is a somewhat awkward middle seat in Business Class, which is quite bad.

The seats are fairly wide with 20 inch and the seat pitch of 45 inch isn’t bad either. That’s why I think that for sitting upright and lounging, the seats in Cathay’s regional Business Class are quite good.

The cabin finishes as such aren’t great, but aren’t bad either. The seats are in the typical Cathay Pacific green with some white and orange (the pillows) highlights.

When it comes to storage, the seats are okay with some storage underneath the seat in front of you.

Then there’s also a small pocket right next to your seat, where you can put magazines etc.

Further storage for something small can be found in-between the seats, but there’s definitely a lack of any enclosed storage for valuables.

Blankets were only available on request.

As you’d expect when reading about the seat pitch and looking at the pictures, the seats are not even close to reclining in a fully flat position. Instead, you can only get the seats into a position, which is rather the standard for Premium Economy Class rather than Business Class.

All in all, the Cathay Pacific regional Business Class on the Boeing 777 isn’t really bad, but it’s not great either, especially for longer flights within Asia.

Catering in the Cathay Pacific regional Business Class

Upon boarding, we were offered a choice of welcome drinks. I went with a nice iced tea.

The menus for dinner were already waiting for us, too. There was hardly any choice though as only the main course had three options (chicken, pork and fish). All food was served on one tray after we reached cruising altitude.

My companion had the “Pan Fried Pork Filet”, which she though was good.

I went with the “Stir Fried Chicken”, which was quite good, too.

Personally, I enjoyed the garlic bread served with dinner very much (there was a choice of other breads, too).

All in all, I thought that dinner was quite good, but I’d appreciate if the service would be a little friendlier. It just felt very robotic and not any personal, which I thought was sad.

Entertainment in the Cathay Pacific regional Business Class

All seats in the Cathay Pacific regional Business Class come with a medium-sized screen, which comes with a rather bad picture quality, but is easy to navigate through.

The CX Studio system isn’t bad either and offers dozens of movie choices, many with an English language option.

Furthermore, there are TV shows, music, games and an airshow available on the system.

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Mediocre headphones are also offered for your convenience on board.

Other than that, newspapers and magazines are offered upon boarding. Plus, there is the typical board magazine, which is interesting enough on Cathay Pacific.

All in all, good entertainment options for regional flights within Asia.

Overall impressions of the Cathay Pacific regional Business Class

There’s hardly anything bad to say about the Cathay Pacific regional Business Class. The catering is good, the service is efficient, but too robotic, and the entertainment options are good for regional flights. However, the mediocre seats and the 2-3-2 configuration aren’t really great, especially as these planes are used for some longer flights within Asia, too. On the other hand, the board product would be phenomenal for regional flights in all other areas of the world, so one shouldn’t be too critical. If the price is right, I’d definitely fly in the Cathay Pacific regional Business Class again.

Cathay Pacific uses 3 different airplane models for this route. I flew the same route in an A330-300 which had the reverse herringbone 1-2-1 seating. Lovely plane, great food, would have been a great flight if it weren’t for the 2 constantly screaming babies in business class (not the fault of Cathay Pacific).

Hey Paul, you are right that there are various types of planes on this rotation, among those Boeing 777 with short haul and long haul configs, Airbus A330 with both configs and even some Airbus A350 (we were scheduled on one of those), but most flights seem to be operated by the (bad) regional product, sadly. It’s still okay for such a short flight, but the long haul config would definitely be more comfortable!